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challenging the concept of normalcyFri, 26 Jan 2018 19:33:50 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/46a0d83e69543d0231f9cf104130aade?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngquixotic chaotichttps://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com
quixoticchaotichttps://feedburner.google.comReflectionshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/quixoticchaotic/~3/_o-ShhBq7-A/
https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/reflections/#commentsFri, 25 Nov 2011 02:24:14 +0000http://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/?p=635What a week. I have felt like I was in the middle of a downward-spiraling hurricane of depression and self-pity, with no way to pull myself out. I’m climbing back up. I always do. And as I spend Thanksgiving dayalone, I feel the need to reflect out loud about the things that have brought me to this point, and why I know I can move forward.

Yesterday, when I was trying to figure out why I felt like my soul was being crushed into a grey mass of oblivion, I knew part of it was the impending holiday spent alone. I was shutting everyone out, pushing away friends and family, because I didn’t want to be a part of anyone else’s family day. I didn’t want to put on a happy face and go through the motions of someone else’s traditions. I wanted to be alone. Honestly, holidays for the past few years have been positively hell even with my own family around for them. Either Mr. Smith was about to deploy, or deployed, or back from deployment and making me miserable. Our holidays always sucked.

Then I thought about the last time I was alone on Thanksgiving. It was 1999. I lived in Spain at the time, and I was pregnant from a one-night stand with a married guy. I decided to have an abortion, but since the procedure is illegal in Spain, I had to fly to the States. I had no one to come with me. I flew in on Tuesday, found a hotel near the clinic, and went by myself to have an abortion on Wednesday. I have never felt so stranded in my life. Until the next day, when I sat in a hotel room, in physical and mental anguish, alone on Thanksgiving day. My family knew I was in the States, and my mom was upset that I couldn’t fly to Kansas to spend the day with them. I told her I was there on a temporary work assignment. I flew back to Spain the next day, and I resumed a miserably lonely existence riding out some of the worst months of my life. Which is saying a lot, considering some of my shit.

Back to the present time… yesterday, I opened up and try to relay this bit of history to someone I’ll call Birch who was trying to understand why I was so upset. Mid-story, I got a phone call from Mr. Smith, who had been blowing me up about needing to talk about divorce “stuff”. That turned out to be a subterfuge for a much larger announcement, made even more ironic by my trip down memory lane… he was calling to tell me that his girlfriend (who also happens to be his first ex-wife aka Voldemort #2, for those who aren’t in the know) is pregnant. And they wanted to tell Bug about it, along with the rest of his family on Thanksgiving (all of whom had been inviting me to join them… thank God I didn’t).

End of phone call. *Cue meltdown.*

Birch called back. I told him what I had just learned and started bawling. I don’t know why it hurt me so much. It just hurt. Usually at this point, I would shut down, stop talking to anyone, hang up, go radar silent. For some reason, I can talk to Birch like I’ve never talked to anyone. I still feel like I don’t make sense outside of my head, and that I’m rambling and awkward, but at least I’m talking.

Eventually it started to come out. I was tired of seeing everyone else being happy around while I’m alone. I’m tired of feeling confused and lost. I’m tired of keeping my feelings so closely guarded that I have no outlet for them. And, in this case, my feelings were of fear. Fear that Mr. Smith and Voldemort #2 are starting a family, one that will include my son and will give him something that I can’t… like siblings, and two parents… fear that I will never be happy or in love again. That part of me will always be alone in a hotel room on Thanksgiving, hating myself for the decisions I’ve made. Ugh.

I spent the rest of yesterday in a pretty solid funk. I stayed up late, on my couch, drinking and smoking myself in to oblivion. At least I calmed down a bit, had a couple of good conversations — including one in which I called Bittersweet to tell her the baby news and we shared a good laugh over what an idiot my ex is. I went to bed feeling about a million times better than I had that morning.

When I woke up today (at almost 2 p.m.), it was hard to get out of bed knowing that everyone else I know was probably surrounded by family or friends, eating, sharing, getting on each other’s nerves… but I took a deep breath and got up anyway.

I cooked myself some awesome food, looked up movie times to go see a show, thought about getting in the shower to get ready to get out of the house… and then I proceeded to lay on the couch surrounded by blankets, pillows, my heating pad, and food. I watched a lot of Glee, and ignored “happy Thanksgiving” text messages. I talked to Bug on the phone and tried to not cry when he asked me how my day was.

Maybe that sounds awful and depressing, but it’s an improvement over how I’ve been feeling. Because I need to cut myself some slack and take a day to rest and just… FEEL. Without wallowing in guilt or self-pity for sometimes being down, or having days (hell, weeks) when I don’t get done what I want to get done. I have a past, and some of it is brutal. But I have come so far and learned so much. Now, I have beautiful things in my life that I can appreciate even more because of everything I’ve experienced.

So, today, I am thankful. For being strong enough to be alone. For being able to move forward and open myself up again. For being able to recognize that part of having a lot of good in your life means sometimes having a little bit of pain and darkness. I’m thankful for my past, and even more thankful for all the possibilities of my future.

]]>https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/reflections/feed/2rocklockshttps://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/reflections/Pity Party for Onehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/quixoticchaotic/~3/xl9TbRQHo5g/
https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/pity-party-for-one/#respondWed, 23 Nov 2011 20:03:19 +0000http://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/?p=629I have maybe never been this depressed at Thanksgiving before. Well, not since 1999, anyway. That seems like another lifetime ago. In some ways, I wonder if I’m having some sort of cyclical event-related depression leftover from that time. Maybe it’s brought on/triggered by how generally dysphoric I’ve been lately anyway about life in general, plus the fact that this is the first Thanksgiving since that one which I will be spending alone.

Sometimes I think about how nice it must be to be obliviously crazy. By that I mean, to just be insane and not know any better. I should work on that. Instead, I am painfully aware of my moods, my thoughts, and how “off” I am. I push people away because they just make me feel more crazy. Their reassurances, their attempts at making me feel better, or worst of all — trying to tell me that I’m being negative and that my life really isn’t that bad. No shit. My life overall is pretty good. I have a nice place to live, I have a beautiful son, I have food, I’m sorta employed. Telling me that doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel shittier for not being able to be happy about it.

Yes, I have tried talking to my friends. I don’t really talk to my family about these things. And, for whatever reason, through no fault of theirs, I am failing to feel connected to them. I just don’t feel understood. I kind of know why, but I don’t feel like there’s much I can do about it. So, I will retreat in to this coccoon of self-pity and misery and I will feel like life is hopeless and just hunker down until the storm passes. Because it always does. The day it doesn’t, I will be dead. Don’t take that as a death threat. It’s reality.

On that note, I don’t know why people are so afraid of dying, or so uptight about talking about it. I know what song I want played at my funeral. I want to be wheeled in late while everyone is sitting there so I can continue to be perpetually tardy like I have all my life. I’m still convinced that I’m going to die when I’m 45, which is something I’ve had a strong conviction about for as long as I can recall. Maybe that’s why I take chances and sometimes do stupid things. Because subconsciously I feel invincible for another 12 years. I think when you’ve experienced so much death & trauma firsthand, at some point death ceases to faze you. I guess that’s a bad thing in a way. The only time it all bothers me is when I have my compulsive death thoughts — “Final Destination” type scenarios that play out in my head whether I want them to or not, brought on by who knows what. Sometimes they’re about me, sometimes they’re about other people. Always they are gruesomely detailed and disturbing in their graphicness. I don’t know why my brain does it. Actually, I kind of do. Apparently it’s a common manifestation of OCD. Shocking that I have OCD, I know.

This whole feeling thing sucks even more because I am usually very action-oriented. I function best when I’m busy, when I’m working, when I have a project, somewhere to go, something… and when I reach this level of shittiness, I am rendered practically incapable of action. Nothing sounds good, nothing makes sense, I can’t make a damn decision about anything. It’s like being held hostage by my brain. And my brain is a mean motherfucker. It means business. Don’t make a move or it will hurt someone. It is not here to negotiate. It wants everything on its own terms. So, I wait. I try to figure out what it wants.

Sometimes that means writing a blog and letting all my shit hang out there. Writing is cathartic to me. I have a drawer full of half-written journals, scrawls on pages, letters written and never sent, held on to over years of moves and life changes. No one has been allowed to read them. Ever. Blogging for me is cathartic in a different way, because it requires me to think more about what I’m feeling and try to express it in a way that will (hopefully) make sense outside of my head.

A lot of times the waiting means just keeping everything inside, but I know that’s not good so I’m trying to get better about it. But it’s a scary feeling, being open and honest about my thoughts when I’ve kept so much to myself. I know it seems like I’m pretty open and out there — but don’t mistake directness & honesty for openness. There is a difference. I guess that’s another reason why I feel disconnected from the world at large… because sometimes the “me” I know feels so drastically different from the “me” everyone else knows. And it’s a lot of fucking work keeping up with it.

Maybe I need to quit doing that. It would require a drastic reduction in my levels of caring what people think. Which I do, way more than my “I’m a badass” image portrayal lets on. I am working on not taking responsibility for other people’s feelings. I don’t mean that in an uncaring way. But in a healthy, positive way. You have your shit, I have mine. I have enough to deal with on my plate, so I am going to stop eating off of yours. Figuratively, speaking of course. I will still steal your actual french fries.

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https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/peace-from-beyond/#respondTue, 08 Nov 2011 15:16:04 +0000http://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/?p=627Last night — well, all day yesterday, really — I was in a total funk. I felt on edge, like any little thing might (and some did) totally set me off. I have spent the last couple of months feeling like I am wandering through my life with little to no direction, almost as if — as one friend put it — I’m watching my life go on around me without any input or control on my part.

After my trip, which in and of itself was wonderful and fulfilling for a lot of reasons, my return to reality has served to further highlight just how shitty I am feeling lately. I’m stressed beyond belief about money, my impending divorce, work (and lack thereof), family, the fact that I get to start paying back my student loans this months and have to register my car and am about to lose my medical insurance and have zero room in my budget (and I use that term loosely) to cover any of this.

When I got home from work around 1 a.m., I avoided dealing with any of this in a mature, responsible manner by passing out on the couch after a little too much bonding time with my bottle of Grey Goose. I slept like crap, but I never worked up the gumption to relocate my drunk ass to my bed.

Upon waking this morning, I laid here on the couch in a post-sleep/hangover haze. I had a surreal feeling, like a dream I had was still with me. In a good way. As my mind wandered back to what had just transpired in my head, I realized I had been dreaming about my grandfather.

My mom’s dad — Grandpa to us kids — passed away when I was 12 years old. Explaining how much he meant to me, to our entire family, would take a whole blog post of its own. He was a disabled WWII veteran and also talented, charismatic, and intelligent. I miss him to this very day.

I don’t have dreams about him as often as I used to have. But the ones I have share some of the same characteristics. In them, he is always in good health, with no signs of the fused vertebrae that debilitated him here on earth. In my dreams, I seem to be the only person who knows he has passed away. It’s like he shows back up and I’m surprised to see him but no one else is. And I”m afraid to ask any questions about why he’s here or how he is healed, because it might somehow make him go away.

Despite this conundrum, dreaming about my grandpa makes me happy. His presence is so calming and peaceful. Even though it doesn’t make whatever problem I’m having go away, when I wake up I feel like he’s still with me surrounding me with love from somewhere else and letting me know it will all be okay.

]]>https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/peace-from-beyond/feed/0rocklockshttps://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/peace-from-beyond/Brain Dumphttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/quixoticchaotic/~3/hSa_phCoVaw/
https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/brain-dump/#respondThu, 27 Oct 2011 05:04:55 +0000http://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/?p=624So many thoughts, so little time to get out my netbook, log in to my blog, and write them all down in coherent sentences. Therefore, since I have obviously managed to complete the first two steps of this process, I’m going to cut myself some slack on the last one and just unload a bit. I’m tired of always thinking of things to write about and then never writing them because I “don’t have time” or I don’t have some perfect blog entry fully written in my head before I get to the keyboard. I guess this is an exercise in stream of consciousness.

I’m back “home” this week. Part business, part pleasure trip. I came back to do a week of volunteer work and do some networking. In my “free” time, I hoped to catch up with family & friends. I also looked forward to some “me” time to just do whatever — read a book, watch endless DIY shows on HGTV while painting my nails — you know. As usual, I’ve grossly underestimated the amount of time things take to do. And I’m broke.

Not enough time is one thing. Not enough time AND not enough money? Suck. But related to another thing I was hoping to accomplish on this trip, which is figuring out how to get myself out of this awful personal/business rut of doing my bar gig and a few things on the side and barely scraping by. Because this is *not* working for me. I mean, it is. But it’s becoming stressful to be this broke all the time.

I want to love what I do. I want to be so damn happy that I get to work every day in my chosen profession. I’ve seen what it can be like… I’ve seen the people who have that form of happiness in their lives. (And I’ve seen the resigned desperation of those who hate what they do, or only work to pay the bills.) I know what I want to do. I don’t know how to get there from here. Ugh.

]]>https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/brain-dump/feed/0rocklockshttps://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/brain-dump/Letting Gohttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/quixoticchaotic/~3/y-fZ_zpS8_Q/
https://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/letting-go/#respondWed, 22 Jun 2011 03:09:38 +0000http://quixoticchaotic.wordpress.com/?p=618This entry has been rolling about in my brain, asking to get out even though I don’t feel like it’s necessarily a fully formed, cohesive piece of written material. It’s just a blurb, a piece of my mind without a lot of context. Something I think about often.

Whenever I am in one of “those” heated conversations with a family member or significant other (and they don’t happen often, but they DO happen), I am frequently accused of being demanding. It’s true. I am. I hold my friends and family to very high standards.

Not that I’m some kind of control freak, unforgiving beotch. I just expect a lot out of ya’ll, because you’re amazing people.

But the thing I figured out recently, about why that statement used to get me so Fired Up and mad, is this: you think I hold you to high standard of performance? Be me for just one day. I used to be on constant criticism mode. Nothing was good enough. Fast enough. Clean enough. Perfect enough. The Critic in my head would not stop.

Thankfully, between coming out and doing some major soul-searching, the Critic and I have reached an understanding. I get that she just wants things to be okay, to be right. But it comes across as controlling at times, and she has to understand that sometimes the best thing is to let go.

Be in the moment. Accept mistakes as things that happen instead of terminal definitions of someone else’s character or capabilities. Realize that what someone else does isn’t always about me, and sometimes there’s nothing I can do about it.